Communications and Critical Thinking (B.A.)

Prepare yourself for a long and satisfying career with this three- year degree program, exclusive to Trent University Durham GTA, which encourages you to develop transferable skills, prized by employers. The program combines required courses – in project management, writing, research, and numeracy – with others (selected by you) from a variety of other programs on campus. You’ll learn to become a creative, logical, and integrative thinker and a clear communicator. You’ll also have a chance to test your abilities in the program’s experiential learning capstone course, working on a meaningful community-based research project.

First Year CCTH Course Descriptions:

CCTH 1000H: Happiness: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.The course has two aims: one, to introduce students to the burgeoning field of happiness studies; and, two, to help students understand the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary study. We will ask the question, “What does it take to be happy?”—and answer it by reading widely in psychology, literature, sociology, economics, philosophy, and cultural studies.

MATH-CCTH 1080H: Math for Everyday Life (Sc). Should you buy a ticket for 6/49 or Super 7? If you test positive for a rare disease, what is the chance that you actually have it? How are E. coli bacteria and interest rates related? These are some of the questions we will investigate in this course. We will also look into the use, misuse, and abuse of mathematics in the media.

PHIL 1200H: Critical Thinking. An introduction to basic principles of good reasoning and argumentation in everyday life and various academic disciplines. Topics include argument structure and evaluation, clarity of expression, common mistakes in reasoning, inductive and deductive reasoning, and formal logic.

WRIT 1001H: Write in Time

This writing-intensive course aims to provide practical and cumulative skills in writing clearly, correctly, and persuasively across disciplines and situations. The course assumes the importance of a close relationship among reading, thinking, and writing, and operates on the premise that the practice of writing encourages thinking and promotes innovative, insightful reflection.